Buller Chart, Updated Edition

This post could arguably be titled Seaching for Benjamin’s Father 13, but it will be easier to find in the future by describing more accurately what it contains: an updated version of the Buller chart that we have periodically considered. 

The updated chart represents visually the conclusions formed on the basis of the evidence collected as we examined Glenn Penner’s hypothesis about the identity of Benjamin 1 Buller. Important points are summarized immediately below the chart, although one will find it profitable to consider the chart against the background of the entire series, especially the last post here. 

1. The basic chart remains unchanged. We begin with George Buller and Dina Thoms, followed by their three sons Hans, George, and Peter (generation 2), the sons’ male descendants (generation 3), and the known males of generation 4. 

2. Based on our findings in the Seaching for Benjamin’s Father series, we are able to identify which of George and Dina’s descendant lines is (probably) ours. The names are highlighted in red to make them easy to spot. According to our understanding, we are descended from the Hans line, by way of Hans’s third (?) son Heinrich.

3. We know the relations of the first four generations because they are all listed in the Przechovka church book. George was the father of Hans, who was the father of Heinrich, who was the father of Benjamin.

4. The chart adds three more generations to the George > Hans > Heinrich > Benjamin line: another Benjamin (generation 5) > David (generation 6) > Peter D (generation 7). (Of course, we could add Peter P and Grandpa Chris to the line; they are omitted only to save space.)

5. We know the relations of the last names of the line, based on various records, including our family book: Benjamin > David > Peter D.

6. We have two Benjamins in the line, so we label the first one Benjamin 1 and the second Benjamin 2.

7. Most important of all is the question mark in the background of the line between Benjamin 1 and Benjamin 2. This signifies that we cannot document the father–son relationship of these two persons. We regard it as highly likely, but we cannot consider it certain. 

We have every reason to believe that our ancestor Benjamin 2 (father of David) was himself the son of Benjamin 1, the Benjamin Buller listed in the Przechovka church book, but because Benjamin 2 is not listed in the church book (which is what the “not PCB” below his name signifies), and because we have at present no other documentary evidence that Benjamin 2 was born to Benjamin 1 circa 1789–1791, we should keep the question mark in the chart and in our minds.

I do believe that the chart accurately represents the history of our family line, which means that I, for example, can count thirteen generations from my grandkids to George and Dina, roughly 350 years from the birth of George to the present day. That is a remarkably long period of history, a full century longer than the United States has existed as a country. Not to be flippant, but … Wow!

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 12

This series has attempted to answer a simple question, a question reflected in the title of the series itself: Who was Benjamin’s father? Having looked at all the evidence known to us at present that is relevant to one or another aspects of that question, we are ready to restate our questions, summarize our information, and draw whatever conclusions the evidence will bear. We begin by rehearsing the necessary background and then stating the basic question of this series.

Background and Question

1. As we have long known, David Buller was the father of Peter D, the father of Peter P, the father of Grandpa Chris. What we discovered some time back, thanks to Molotschna colony records made available online, was the name of David’s father: Benjamin (see the evidence collected here). Based on his age in the Rovno census, we estimated that Benjamin father of David was born sometime around 1789.

2. We also discovered from the same Molotschna records that Benjamin’s father was likewise named Benjamin (see the discussion of this Benjamin here). Based on the age of his children, we guessed (and I do mean guessed!) his year of birth to have been around 1765, give or take five or more years.

3. To distinguish these two Benjamins, we labeled the father Benjamin 1 and the son Benjamin 2. We thus were able to reconstruct our family line as follows (moving backward in time):

Grandpa Chris < Peter P < Peter D < David < Benjamin 2 < Benjamin 1 < ???? 

This reconstructed line also represents clearly the question with which this series has been concerned: Who was Benjamin 1’s father? 

Our uncertainty in this matter stems from a simple observation. The church book of the Przechovka congregation, the church from which all Bullers in our family seem to have come, lists no father–son combination in which both are named Benjamin during this time. Even worse, the Przechovka church book lists no Benjamin Buller born around 1789, the approximate year of Benjamin 2’s birth. This raised the question whether either Benjamin 1 or Benjamin 2 were a part of that church. We assumed that they were, but we lacked any documentary evidence proving so.

This was the situation before Glenn Penner offered a possible answer based on his understanding of the evidence that we do have, which includes both the church book and various government records. I have included Glenn’s suggestion in full at the end of this post, but we will summarize it around the two major subjects of our inquiry, our two Benjamins.

Benjamin 2

The central question concerning Benjamin 2 is whether he was a member of the Przechovka church. Thanks to the 1810 census of Mennonites in the Schwetz region of West Prussia (here), we have good reason to conclude that he was. The argument is rather straightforward.

1. The 1810 census lists a nineteen-year-old named Benjamin Buller.

2. This Benjamin Buller would thus have been born 1791 or thereabouts.

3. We know of no Benjamin Buller born around this time other than our ancestor.

These first three points establish beyond reasonable doubt that this Benjamin Buller is our ancestor.  The estimated dates of birth (1789 or 1791) are close enough to be considered a match, especially since there are no other Benjamin Bullers known to us. The next three points add further details about Benjamin.

4. This Benjamin Buller (2) was a servant of Benjamin Wedel of Przechovka.

5. We know that this same Benjamin Wedel was elder in the Przechovka church.

6. Thus, Benjamin Buller 2 was almost certainly also a member of that church 

It is true that we do not have documentary proof that Benjamin 2 was a member of the church; his name does not appear in the church book. However, his close association with the elder of the church makes it highly probable that Benjamin 2 was likewise a member of the church. 

We do not know exactly why Benjamin 2 is missing from the church book, but his absence does not really surprise, since it is the nature of church books of that era to have gaps and omissions. What we do know, or at least think we know with a fair degree of certainty, is that Benjamin 2 was born into the Przechovka church. Why is this important? Because it tells us that Benjamin 2’s father, Benjamin 1, was also a member of the Przechovka church, which gives us hope of identifying him in the church records.

Benjamin 1

According to the Przechovka church book, there was only one person named Benjamin Buller who could have fathered a son named Benjamin in the 1789–1791 period. This Benjamin, number 352 in the book, was almost certainly Benjamin 1, since there is no other Benjamin Buller listed who might have fathered Benjamin 2. As Glenn observed earlier, “ I cannot think of any other possibility without inventing more Benjamin Bullers (and I have no documentation available that would justify that).” To recap briefly: because we know that Benjamin 2 was born into the Przechovka church, and because we know of no Benjamin Buller in the church who could have fathered Benjamin 2 around 1790 other than number 352 Benjamin Buller in the church book, the only reasonable explanation is that number 352 is, in fact, Benjamin 1, father of Benjamin 2. Przechovka number 352 is almost certainly our ancestor, the person we have thus far referred to as Benjamin 1.

The church book tells us that Benjamin 1 was baptized 31 August 1772, which implies a year of birth around 1753–1755. Beyond that we cannot say, since the church book does not record a year or date of birth. Fortunately, the church book does tell us who Benjamin 1’s father was: Heinrich Buller, who was himself the son of Hans Buller, who was the son of George Buller and Dina Thoms—the founding Bullers of the Przechovka church.

This bears repeating: locating Benjamin 2 at the Przechovka church enables us to identify his father Benjamin 1, whose father Heinrich links us to the original Buller couple in the church. Our previous suspicions were correct: our family does come from the Przechovka church. Now that we know the identity of Benjamin 1, we also know the name of his father and our connection back to George and Dina, who are the earliest known Bullers of the Przechovka church.

We do know more about Benjamin 1 (see numbers 3–9 in this series), but the crucial point is that we now know the name of his father and his place in the line of Bullers descended from George Buller and Dina Thoms. This series is completed, but a new post awaits, one in which we update the chart of Bullers from the Przechovka church, a chart that will represent our unbroken family line for a period of over three centuries.

***

Glenn Penner prompted this investigation and this series with the following comments:

Some speculation about the Benjamin Bullers:

I believe that your ancestor Benjamin Buller (GRANDMA 402138) was the son of Benjamin who was both 60393 and 32139. I believe that not long after Benjamin 2 moved to Volhynia, his father Benjamin 1 (who would have been a widower of about 70 or more years) left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation). Considering the rarity of the name Benjamin among the early Bullers I cannot think of any other possibility without inventing more Benjamin Bullers (and I have no documentation available that would justify that).

I also believe that Benjamin 1 was the Benjamin Buller found in Deutsch Konopath in the 1789 census of Mennonite land owners in West Prussia. Note that 32139 was married in Deutsch Konopath in 1774.

The only inconsistency here is that 60393 is given the patronymic Benjamin in the 1835 census and 32139 is known to be the son of Heinrich Buller. This ties in with some work I have been doing on the 1835 census. I have found that many of the men who died between the 1816 and 1835 censuses were given the same patronymic as their first names in the 1835 census and that some of these are incorrect. This is particularly true for those men who were older when they died (their fathers would have died in Prussia and their children never knew these grandfathers). This would be the case for Benjamin 1. It is likely that none of his survivors in Alexanderwohl knew the name of Benjamin 1’s father. It seems to me that whenever this was the case for the 1835 census the census taker simply repeated the deceased man’s name as the middle name patronymic.

I also believe that Benjamin 2 was the 19-year-old Benjamin Buller found in Przechowko in 1810 (http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/Schwetz_1810.htm). Again I see no other possibility. Your interpretation (as well as mine) of the Volhynian census has him coming from Prussia in 1817. If that is the case his marriage would have taken place in Prussia. The Mennonites of this region lived in the Schwetz Evangelical Lutheran parish. Since the state (Evangelical Lutheran) church was required to record the vital statistics of the Mennonites in their parishes from 1800 on, the Schwetz Lutheran church records should contain the marriage of Benjamin 2 and Helena (ca. 1813–15) and probably the birth of Benjamin 3 (ca. 1816). I cannot find any Mennonite entries in the Schwetz records which are available on microfilm. I noticed also that Adalbert Goertz extracted many Mennonite events from the Culm and Graudenz Lutheran records but not the Schwetz records. I see two possibilities of why there are no Mennonites in the Schwetz records: (1) all of the Lutheran ministers from 1800 until 1874 (when Mennonites were finally granted citizenship) did not record Mennonites, in violation of the law of 1800; or (2) they kept a separate register of Mennonite vital records (as was often done) and that/those register/s is/are missing.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 11

We will wrap up the Benjamin series shortly, but first it is worth our while to spend a moment examining the 1810 Mennonite Census of the Schwetz Region of West Prussia (here) referenced in the previous post. In that census we noticed a nineteen-year-old (thus born around 1791) Benjamin Buller who was a servant in the house of Elder Benjamin Wedel of Przechovka. Quite apart from the question of whether this Benjamin is our direct ancestor (see the following post), this information prompts one to wonder of how common it was for Mennonite young people to serve in the houses of nonrelative (we assume) Mennonites.

We have encountered the practice of servanthood previously, in Baron von Haxthausen’s account of his 1843 visit to the Molotschna colony (see here):

Nowhere is a more complete equality observable in all that relates to religious institutions than among the Mennonites. … This prevailing equality is most clearly manifested in the relation between master and servant; I noticed this particularly between Herr Kornies and the servant who drove us; it appeared more like the relation of a son to his father than of a servant to his master. On my remarking this to Herr Kornies, he replied, “With us it is a rule that every one, even the son of the richest peasant, should live as a servant for a few years with one of the neighbours; service therefore with us does not constitute the occupation of a class, but is one step in life, a school; one of my younger brothers was for some time a servant [429] with me, and he is now my superintendent. We pay our men-servants and girls very high wages—from thirty to seventy silver roubles—and keep this custom up strictly, which is found to bring us no loss. In this way even a poor man has an opportunity of accumulating a small fortune, and here, where there is plenty of fertile waste land, of establishing a small farm and becoming a peasant himself. It is by no means unusual for the daughters even of rich peasants to marry a servant of the house, however poor, provided he is worthy and industrious.” (von Haxthausen 1856, 1:428–29)

Based on von Haxthausen’s report, we might imagine that the Molotschna practice had a long history, having begun at least in Poland/West Prussia, if not earlier. Still, before we jump to any conclusions, we should examine the data of the census more closely. 

The 1810 census groups Mennonite families by village, which makes it easy to look for any patterns in the distribution of servants among these communities. The table below lists each village in the first column, then the number of families recorded for that village, followed by the number of servants listed for the entire village.

Bratwin	4	0
Przechovka	17	10
Beckersitz	4	1
Polnisch Westfahlen	3	0
Neunhuben	7	0
Deutsch Westpfalen	2	0
Dworzisko	1	0
Ostrower Kamp	8	1
Niedwitz	2	0
Glugowko	5	0

Clearly, Przechovka had the largest concentration of Mennonite families in the Schwetz area, but that is not what is most striking about the data. Ten out of the twelve servants listed in the census were found in Przechovka, ten servants within a group of seventeen families. All the other villages together had thirty-six families but only two servants.

Based on the information contained within the 1810 census, we could not conclude that servants in the families of all Mennonites was common; we could, however, reasonably say that this practice was more common among the Mennonite families of the Przechovka church—yet even that statement requires some clarification. Although the table above might be taken to imply that ten out of seventeen (or 59 percent) of the families in Przechovka had a servant in 1810, in fact, three families had two servants each and four had one. In terms of raw numbers, then, only 41 percent of the families had at least one servant, whereas 18 percent had two servants. These more nuanced figures may hint at the presence of social stratification in the church, although we would need far more evidence than this to consider this more than a suggestive possibility.

At the least, this should caution us against stating what Mennonites as a large group did or did not do. The various Mennonite congregations certainly shared many practices in common, but that does not mean that they were identical in terms of social or economic organization. Why Przechovka had a much higher incidence of nonrelative (again, we assume) servants than the other Mennonite villages in the Schwetz area is at present unknown, but it is an intriguing question that deserves further exploration.

It is not, of course, sufficient merely to look at the numbers of servants in each village. We should also ask about who these servants were. What can we learn about the practice by categorizing them by age and gender?

The gender question is easiest: the servants were equally divided between six females and six males. There was no clear preference for or expectation concerning one gender being more likely to assume a servant role.

The distribution of ages is more surprising, I think. First, the ages range from eighteen to thirty-two. This fact alone forces us to qualify the picture that von Haxthausen presents: servanthood was not only (perhaps) a rite of passage for young adults; apparently it was a way of life, a means of survival for those who for some reason lacked a family or a home of their own. A closer look as the age distribution of the servants reinforces the picture.

• Four servants are still in their teens: an eighteen-year-old and three nineteen-year-olds.
• Two male servants are twenty-one years old.
• Five of the servants are twenty-four, twenty-five, or twenty-six.
• The thirty-two-year old male servant is by far the oldest of the group.

The average age of all twelve servants is nearly twenty-three, which is older than one might expect. We should not draw any firm conclusions from this information, at least until we have a better sense of the average age at which Przechovka men and women entered their first marriages, but it seems that servanthood was not, for many of the individuals listed, the fulfillment of an expected role for a temporary period, a rite of passage incumbent upon all Mennonite young people; rather, becoming a servant in the home of a nonrelative was more likely an economic or social necessity, something that one did temporarily in order to improve one’s financial position or long-term in order to survive.

At the least, I think, we should not romanticize the notion of Mennonite young people serving in the homes and fields of their fellow congregants. Baron von Haxthausen’s report of Cornies’s defense of the institution presumably bears some seeds of truth, but I doubt that few young Mennonites aspired to be a servant in someone else’s home. The fact that so many in Przechovka did testifies both to the harshness of life in 1810 as well as their own determination to do whatever was necessary to make life better for themselves and, presumably, their families.

If Benjamin Buller, servant in the home of Benjamin Wedel, is our own ancestor, we may well have a better explanation than before why he left the Schwetz area for the unfamiliar territory of Volhynia. That explanation will be taken up in the following, and likely concluding, post.

Work Cited

Haxthausen, August von. 1856. The Russian Empire: Its People, Institutions and Resources. Translated by Robert Farie. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall. Available online: vol. 1, vol. 2.

Alexanderwohl 4

Not surprisingly, we have uncovered as many questions as answers in our short series on the village Alexanderwohl. We think we know where the school was located but do not know when it was built. Likewise, we are unsure when the church was built and cannot say with certainty to what extent it still stands. A similar story holds for Alexanderwohl’s cemeteries.

The 1874 map we showed in an earlier post identified two separate cemeteries: an old one (5) and a newer one (6) that we supposed was connected with the location of the church.

Rudy Friesen’s map of Alexanderwohl shows only one cemetery, and he locates it to the north, right between the belt of tree marked on this map as woodlot. Friesen also writes of Alexanderwohl, “Today there are only a few Mennonite buildings remaining and the cemetery no longer exists” (1996, 207). Recognizing that satellite imagery is no substitute for boots on the ground, let us see to what extent we can confirm or contradict Friesen’s conclusion.

Since we know the general locations of both cemeteries, we know roughly where they should be in the Google Earth images. The old cemetery, for example, should be immediately behind the belt of trees at the west (left) end of the main village (i.e., before the bend in the road). The photograph below is looking toward the north, so the cemetery should be in the lower left corner.

The area of lighter dirt south of the trees at the left edge of the photo is where we might expect to see the old cemetery. Even at close range, one sees no traces at all of a cemetery (see here; the link is to a Google Earth view, so it may be slow to load). No other spots in the area look promising either, so we are probably correct to conclude that the old cemetery, the one that presumably held the graves of Alexanderwohl’s earliest settlers—including Benjamin Heinrich Buller—has, as too often happens, been erased from the surface of the earth.

Presumably Friesen expects that the same fate befell the new cemetery (although he seemingly does not know that it was Alexanderwohl’s second cemetery). The photograph below appears to confirm his claim—if one is looking for the cemetery between the two rows of trees, or even a little farther south, where the map indicates it should be.

However, if one widens the view and takes a step back (here is a benefit of satellite photography), one can see what looks very much like a cemetery farther south than we expected.

An overhead closeup is even more convincing: this small area set within the field has every appearance of being a cemetery, perhaps the cemetery where the members of the Alexanderwohl church were laid to rest.

We cannot be certain of this identification, of course, but it is more likely than not that at least one of Alexanderwohl’s cemeteries survives. Although Benjamin Buller’s grave is almost assuredly lost with the others of the old cemetery, other members of our broader family were likely laid to rest and may well still remain in the cemetery pictured above.

Work Cited

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.

Alexanderwohl 3

Thus far in this series we have placed Alexanderwohol within its regional context (ca. 8 miles west of Waldheim and 7 miles north of Alexanderkrone) and identified the still-standing village school in recent satellite photos. This post moves on to the Alexanderwohl church building.

The satellite photographs displayed earlier leave little doubt that some structure still stands at the site of the church. Whether or not that is the original church remains to be seen. In fact, a great deal about the church remains to be seen, since there is some disagreement about both its beginning and its end.

1. The Date of Construction

The construction of the church building is frequently dated to 1865 (so Mennonitische Rundschau, 17 June 1981, cited in Duerksen and Duerksen 1987, 13; Krahn and Penner 2011). However, Duerksen and Duerksen also include Elder Peter Wedel’s report that 30 October 1860 was the date on which “our new church building was dedicated” (1987, 12). Is the printing of 1860 an error? Unfortunately, the source of Wedel’s report is not provided, so we cannot follow up to confirm or correct the date.

The 1860 date is also supported by the Alexanderwohl entry in Hege 1913, which reads: “Since 1860, the congregation has had a church in the village Alexanderwohl…; before then, worship services were held in the schoolhouse” (1:24–25; the German is: “Seit 1860 besitzt die Gemeinde eine Kirche im Dorf Alexanderwohl…, bis dahin wurden die Gottesdienste im Schulhause abgehalten”).

Without further evidence, preferably of the primary type, it is impossible to know when the church was constructed. The exact date is not crucial, more a matter of curiosity than of vital concern. If nothing else, this is another reminder of how many details of the Molotschna Mennonite experience remain unknown.

2. The Building

The original church building was an impressive structure. According to the Mennonitische Rundschau article, “The walls were of red kiln fired bricks. The church was forty feet wide and sixty feet long. A large gallery in the shape of a ‘U’ considerably increased the seating capacity” (in Duerksen and Duerksen 1987, 13).

Rudy P. Friesen (who also dates the construction to 1865) offers further details:

It was a large two storey structure generally based on the traditional Mennonite church design. Located parallel to the street, the building’s thick exterior masonry walls had plaster applied to them. The pulpit/platform was located along the long side facing the street. The small shuttered windows were the same size throughout whereas most of the early Mennonite churches had a series of tall windows behind the pulpit/platform. This created the appearance of a large two storey house. The hip gable roof, covered with clay tiles, was similar to that specified by Johann Cornies for village schools during the time of educational reform. It was used in several instances for church buildings.

The main entrance was located at the rear of the building facing the church yard. There were also small side entrances. Two large gateposts at the street emphasized the entrance to the church yard and a masonry fence separated it from the street. (1996, 208)

Given the size of the structure and the quality of its construction, it is no surprise that the residents of Alexanderwohl did not build it sooner. A project of this magnitude requires time and especially funding to complete, and there was no excess of the latter in Alexanderwohl’s early years, as its settlers worked to scratch out a living from the steppe land.

3. The Fate of the Building

Just as the beginning of the building is a matter of disagreement, so is its end. The Mennonitische Rundschau article cited above states simply: “The church was torn down before World War II” (Duerksen and Duerksen 1987, 13). The caption to a 1977 photograph in the Mennonite Archival Image Database (MAID) appears to concur: “This photo is of a flat roof building with a parking lot in front. This location is the site of the former Mennonite Church in Alexanderwohl, Molotschna colony” (for the photo, see here). 

Rudy Friesen, however, claims that the church still stands. The 1990s photograph he provides (right) differs greatly from the 1977 one, although one can see some resemblances between the two buildings. Friesen writes:

The building still exists today although it is virtually unrecognizable since it has been substantially altered. Only the lower half of the existing walls remain, but the recessed side entrance [pictured to the right?] and the window proportions are still recognizable. A new lower roof structure covered with clay tiles has totally changed the appearance of the building. It is now used as a storage building for the local collective farm. (Friesen 1996, 208)

How do we put all these disparate facts together? It may be that the church was not completely torn down before World War II, although it was probably significantly and substantially changed. The second story was apparently removed and a flat roof put in its place. This would explain the appearance of the building in the 1970s. Several decades later a new pitched roof was placed on top of the first, or original, floor; this is the structure that Friesen saw.

What the church looks like today (assuming Friesen is correct that the building still stands) is anyone’s guess. It is not the only, or the last, unanswered question about Alexanderwohl. We will take up yet another in the following post.

Works Cited

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.

Hege, Christian. 1913. Alexanderwohl. Mennonitisches Lexicon 1:24–25.

Krahn, Cornelius, and Glenn Penner. 2011. Alexanderwohl (Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.